A Study on Case Stacking and Case Alternations in Korean: A Constraint-Based Approach

This paper is mainly concerned with case stacking and case alternation phenomena occurring in sentences headed by existential predicates in Korean. Against the so-called Case Filter, Yoon (2001) accepts case stacking such as N+dative+nominative in Korean. On the other hand, Schütze (2001) rejects it by suggesting that the case stacking should be analyzed as N+dative+focus. Because of the lack of decisive supporting data for Schütze (2001), Yoon s analysis seems to be preferable. However, I claim here that similar to Schütze (2001), there is no case stacking in Korean on the basis of Choi (2004). Furthermore, the analysis made in this paper enables us to account for case alternations in the constructions at issue, by providing various relevant data. Consequently, this theory provides a new way of analyzing other constructions involving case stacking and case alternations in Korean.